2018 Adelaide Crows pre-season camp

Collective Minds is a consultancy group based in Queensland, which is "hired by sporting teams and businesses to build a mentally resilient culture",[1] had worked with Adelaide throughout the 2017 season, and had generally been perceived as effective, if unorthodox. On one occasion after the Grand Final loss, they had gotten every player to run successive 100-metre sprints while the theme song of the Richmond Football Club played on repeat over loudspeakers.[1] Collective Minds and the Adelaide Football Club had a multi-year regimen with each other.[7] Prior to the camp, Crows players were made to sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from publicly discussing the events of the camp.[8]

Upon entering the bus that was to carry them from Broadbeach to the camp, Group 1 was alarmed to be greeted by men wearing combat uniforms and holding what appeared to be automatic firearms, though the guns were revealed to be fake.[9] The players were then blindfolded, and were driven for an hour until they arrived at the camp.[1] Upon arrival they had their blindfolds removed, and were greeted by roughly 25 camp workers, who refused to reveal the location at which they were at.[1] Among the first exercises performed by Group 1 was an exercise in which players were told to find a partner and stare at their eyes, alternating which eye they were staring at.[1] During the middle of this exercise, Tom Lynch collapsed. He was taken to a bed, where he started to vomit.[9] Despite his condition, camp workers refused to call for medical attention, claiming that he was only suffering from dizziness.[1] Lynch was only given medical assistance upon the demands of the players, and club doctor Marc Cesana, who was not at the camp and did not know where it was located, was contacted and made to drive to it and bring Lynch back to Broadbeach to provide medical attention.[9][1]

Groups 2 and 3 were subject to a less severe experience than Group 1, with them arriving a day after Group 1 did. They were not blindfolded on the drive there, though they were ordered to keep their heads down for the entire trip, while heavy metal music played over loudspeakers.[1]

During the first night of the camp, all players were asked to publicly divulge their weaknesses using an Aboriginal Australian digging stick as a Talking stick.[10] Eddie Betts, Cam Ellis-Yolmen, Wayne Milera and Curtly Hampton, all of whom are aboriginal, found this action culturally offensive, and it only contributed to their distaste for the camp.[1] Collective Minds has admitted that using the digging stick in the way that they did was a mistake.[10]

Before sunrise on the second day of camp, players were woken up and taken to a worker in the woods, who introduced himself as "Wolfgang".[9] One by one, players were then tied with to a tree. The only way for a player to free himself was to crawl to a knife located 10 metres away.[11] While they were attempting to reach the knife, nine of their teammates would hurl abuse at them. This abuse was deeply personal, with barbs calling back to childhood trauma, relationship issues and domestic abuse that had been gleaned from info leaked to the runners of the camp without the consent of the players, derived from confidential disclosures players had made to Adelaide staff.[11] In some, cases, this information was confidential to the extent players had not divulged it to their spouses.[1] Jeff Bond, former Chief Psychologist for the Australian Institute of Sport, told The Age that "Using people's personal trauma to drive them is so illogical and dangerous it's not funny".[11] Bond also compared many of the measures taken in the camp to ones used for training commandos in the military.[1]

Social interaction at the camp was extremely limited, players were ordered not to talk with each other when not performing exercises, and as all phones had been confiscated most players had zero contact with the outside world. The only outside contact allowed was for players who had pregnant spouses, who were allowed a few minutes a day to speak.[1]

The camp had a substantial negative effect on the Adelaide players. One anonymous player told The Age that;

We were a team and a group of players in the peak of our powers that was ready to win a premiership. But our bond with the club, with each other, was torn apart at that camp.[1]

Several Adelaide players left the club over the next few seasons. Among the most notable departures were Eddie Betts, who had declared "That [camp] was one of the main reasons why it was so hard to enjoy footy", who returned to his old club Carlton.[1][17] and Mitch McGovern, who left the club after the 2018 season, also to play for Carlton. In June 2020, McGovern's manager Colin Young singled out the camp as the singular reason for McGovern leaving the club.[18] All in all, 8 out of Adelaide's best 22 players in 2017 left the club as of July 2020, a turnover amount described as an "exodus".[11]